The CIA Did The Internet A Heckin' Frighten With Pupper Tweets

And you shall pet the floof, and the floof shall let you pet.

When the CIA began posting tweets using colloquial, meme-centric language in recent weeks, people using Twitter were notably disturbed.

In internet-friendly dog language, the story of the CIA’s strange rebranding goes like this: though the government organization trotted out some of its smolest pupperinos in a series of tweets on Wednesday night, the internet did not find the thread to be “12/10, would boop again”.

This lingo is most traceable to a Facebook community called Dogspotting, which boasts nearly 700,000 members, devoted to taking pictures of and appreciating pictures of random, adorable dogs. A certain lexicon sprung out of the group, as written up by NPR, that has since bled into the dog-related memescape.

A post shared by John Trulli (@doggosdoingthings) on Aug 21, 2017 at 2:10pm PDT

The CIA attempted to tap into this cute but irritating zeitgeist by nodding to doggo-speak throughout the Twitter thread, mostly by referring to the dogs as “pups.” The capitalization on Dogspotting lingo is most obvious in the tweet below.

Trainer presents tin to pup who sniffs itTrainer then erupts into squeals of delight, jumps around & tells them they are a h*ckin' good dog pic.twitter.com/ZpHcFqRpjy

At face value, this is almost cute because there’s a dog involved. But given the history of American intelligence personnel using dogs to torture prisoners and the shady history of the CIA in general, many people were thoroughly unamused.